Understanding Battery Life Testing

Understanding Battery Life Testing
White Paper
Table of Contents
Overview ................................................................................................................................3
Introduction.............................................................................................................................3
Measuring Battery Power Consumption.................................................................................4
Test Setup...............................................................................................................................5

The Network Simulator...........................................................................................5
The Power Supply...................................................................................................6
The Battery Adaptor................................................................................................7
The Equipment Control Software............................................................................8
GSMA TS09 Specification: Test Parameters...........................................................................9

Test Methods.........................................................................................................................11
Anritsu Test Solution..............................................................................................................11
Conclusion............................................................................................................................13
References............................................................................................................................13
Overview
This guide details how Anritsu tools help designers and testers identify power consumption issues early in
the product development cycle, resulting in longer battery life.
The guide first describes the fundamentals of lab battery testing measurement, then details the recent
standard GSMA TS09 dedicated to battery testing, and finally presents Anritsus automated system solution.
Introduction
Although smartphone users are quite satisfied with the multiple functionalities and the convenience brought
by their devices, some users express concerns about the rather poor battery life compared to the previous
generation of feature phones. For some customers, the battery life is one of the key factors involved in the
decision to purchase a smartphone.
The introduction of large touch screens played an important role in the current smartphone success. The
displays allow users to spend much more time browsing websites or using applications handling large
amounts of IP data.
This more frequent usage, as well as the new hardware required, naturally results in increased power
consumption, leading to a reduction of battery life for a given capacity.
The smartphone hardware capabilities are driven by the creativity of application developers (and vice-versa) to
bring a better user experience. In recent years, the terminals have seen a substantial increase in term of screen
size, processing power and memory size. On top of the 3GPP cellular radio evolution from 2G/3G to LTE/
LTE-A, new types of radio have been incorporated such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS or NFC.
Figure 1. Evolution of smartphone technologies.
Previous feature phones were typically fitted with a rechargeable battery with the capacity of about 800 mAh,
which would last for several days with typical use on a single. Nowadays, most smartphone embed at least a
1500 mAh battery, and up to 3000 mAh for larger devices such as phablet. However, even having a battery
capacity of twice the previous amount does not fully cover the amount of power required for a typical day of
smartphone usage.
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While the smartphone processing has followed Moores Law [1] that computer performance would
double every two years, the energy density in batteries has only increased five times in about 100 years.
A revolution can be still expected in battery density; however the actual trend for the next 10 year is
the well-known lithium-ion discovered in Oxford in the 1960s. In the meantime, manufacturers will have
to focus on energy efficiency optimizing smartphone, and also for M2M devices using Machine Type
Communication (MTC).
Measuring Battery Power Consumption

Scenario
Minimizing the power consumption of different smartphone parts requires established scenarios for
quantitative measurement. Defining those scenarios enables comparing reference measurements
to optimize specific part such as the baseband processing, radio frequency modulation, application
processing or screen consumption.
One typical way of defining scenarios is to define different user profile. Each profile represents a certain
smartphone usage (voice, video streaming, web-browsing, chat ) based on typical users such as
Voice only, Teenager, Business User, Tethering . On top of the smartphone user usage, the network
conditions are to be defined for the scenario. The lab testing approach allows setup known and
repeatable radio conditions thanks to a network simulator.
UE makers tend to create their own scenario based on their priorities, however the GSMA has published
a standardized guideline to ensure a common understanding between industry players. This specification
is the so-called Battery Life Measurement and Current Consumption Technique and the current version
V7.6 published in June 2013 can be used as test methodology. In addition, the TS09 definitions are
cross-referenced with the 3GPP measurement items (Table 1).
The TS09 contents define the following test specifications for each cellular standard (GSM, W-CDMA,
LTE) and non-cellular (BT, Wi-Fi). It provides a handful reference framework for the industry.
Table 1. TS09 Test Specification Contents.
Test Setup
In this section one basic lab test setup is described as a guideline for automating battery consumption testing
based on Anritsu solution. This composition is a sample case. It may be necessary to change the setup
according to the desired test environment.
Figure 2. Guideline for automating battery consumption testing based on Anritsu Automation.
Each component of the setup is described here:

The Network Simulator
This is the equipment that can simulate Basestation and some additional core network capabilities that can
cover up to RRC, NAS, IMS and data transaction. Most network simulators are designed to perform various
tests for 3GPP conformance (RF or Protocol) test. If the equipment is mostly restricted to conformance test
without much possibility of tweaking its functionalities, it may not be the best fit for the battery life testing.
It is recommended to choose equipment that would give you as much flexibility (possibility of extending
functionalities) as possible. The Anritsu protocol tester MD8475A is a perfect versatile candidate. It has a
convenient GUI interface and SmartStudio, where parameters can be tweaked. It can also be easily automated
with GPIB command or using our dedicated automation software embedding the GSMA test cases.
The Power Supply

In battery consumption testing, the power supply plays an important role: It should be able to display both
voltage and current being drained by DUT and transfer the values to the PC to be collected by the remote
control software on real time basis.
Figure 3. Real time capture of power consumption on the SmartStudio Manager.
Automation based on 3G voice call, first peak being registration, second peak is the voice call starting at
maximum power, followed by TPC adapting power to the radio condition, with the final plateau being the stable
voice call. (1s logging rate).
The choice of the power supply will depend on the accuracy of test requirements. Indeed, the changes of
chipset power consumption may vary quite quickly, in a magnitude of several milliseconds time scale, due to
status mode change, such as idle or connected, or Discontinuous reception or transmission.
The following features can be important selection criteria depending on the accuracy of the capture required:

The sampling rate of the instrument: how often the power supply can measure current (and/or voltage)?
The logging rate: At what pace the information measured can be stored in the internal memory in
function of the selected measurements?
The internal memory storage: How much measurement data can be stored in the power supply?
The reporting rate: How quickly can it send the measured data to control PC?
On one hand, if the focus of the measurement is a detail of current consumption changes on milliseconds scale,
a large storage capability as well as a fast internal logging is required. A real time basis reporting of these values
to the control PC is limited.
On the other hand, if the measurement aims at an average current consumption over a long period such as
minutes or hour, the sampling rate may not be that relevant and a real time reporting to the control PC is then the
preferred solution.
The Battery Adaptor

It may not be perceived as a critical component for testing, however, the battery adaptor can be an essential
part if you are working on commercial devices. As you see in Figure 2, the UE battery port should be directly
connected to the power supply. A specially designed adaptor is required to fit into UEs battery slot and should
have the extension cables to be connected to the power supply as per Figure 4.
The battery adaptors are usually available at UE maker, however, for the rest of the industry the adaptor may
have to be built.
Figure 4. Battery Adaptor example.
The Equipment Control Software

Many tests can be done manually by pressing buttons on the equipment and writing down the measured value,
however automation software is highly recommended as the Battery Life Test involves reading the current value
with a fraction of second for a relative long period of time. Considering the number of elements involved in
automation system, the automation could be cumbersome.
Automation software embedding predefined scenario dedicated for battery testing, such as the Anritsu
SmartStudio Manager (SSM), can easily automate network simulator and power supply measurement logging.
The Anritsu SSM, in Figure 5, embeds a set of test cases following TS09 recommendations (detailed later), which
can be easily executed or fitted to different custom requirements. It uses high-level procedures blocks that can
be arrange in a graphical flowchart interface.
Figure 5. Automation software Anritsu SSM functionalities.
GSMA TS09 Specification: Test Parameters

In this section, in order to understand the principles of the GSMA TS09 specification, the LTE FDD test
parameters are outlined as an example.
The LTE FDD defines the Standby Time Test and Packet Switched Transfer Test.

The Packet Switched Transfer Test is composed of three sections: LTE Download, LTE File Upload,
and LTE FDD Parallel File Download and File Upload.
The LTE FDD Standby Time item defines recommended parameters for bearers. When testing
smartphones, TS09 defines both the test results and the data including these parameters.
Bearer items include DL EARFCN and Neighbor Cell settings, DRX Cycle and control channel power
ratio settings. Setting these test parameters requires determining the current and power consumption
when the smartphone is in Idle status.
The LTE Download item includes the UL settings in addition to the same test items as the Standby
Time Test items.
Since it is necessary to run a DL download test after establishing communications, not only the DL bandwidth
and TBS index must be defined, but also the UL EARFCN and Tx level, communications bandwidth, TBS
(Transmit Block Size) index and RB (Resource Block) settings must be set.
The LTE FDD Parallel File Download and File Upload test items are design to stress the device communications
performance to its maximum power consumption. In comparison to the LTE Download test parameters, the
RB and TBS index settings for both UL and DL are defined for performing settings required for U-Plane data
communications in both directions.
The different parameters to be set are summed up in Table 2 for standby and for Packet Switched Transfer Test.
Those parameters are automatically set up in the simulator by the automation software:
Table 2. TS09 Parameters for LTE network configuration.
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Test Methods
Battery Capacity
First the end of life voltage (EOLV) of the phone is measured by means of an external power supply and by
measuring the voltage at which the phone drops an active call. Measuring the battery capacity C is done by
measuring the voltage U over time t at a shunt resistor R connected to the battery as described in chapter 20 of
the specification [2]. The measurement lasts till a complete discharge of the battery. The battery capacity is than
calculated by means of integrating the drain current between the start of the measurement (with a fully charged
battery) till the moment where the end of life voltage is reached:

Current Consumption and Battery Lifetime

For estimation of the to be expected battery lifetime t, the measured and over time averaged current I measured
is used together with the measured battery capacity C as described in chapter 19 of the specification [2]:
Anritsu Test Solution

Anritsus solution (Figure 2) supports the GSMA Test case defined in Table 3. Due to the automation software,
SSM Anritsu covers a substantial part of the specification. All measurements of the fast changing current and
an appropriate averaging over time are performed automatically by the automation software.
Table 3. Anritsu Battery Testing automation test cases following GSMA TS09 recommendation.
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Anritsus solution is also flexible and allows an easy customization and integration of different technologies
such as WLAN or GPS in the automation system.
Measure Current During:

Call Processing
Messaging
File Transfer
Web Browsing
Video Streaming
VoLTE/RCS/IMS
WLAN Offload
Positioning
Camera
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Conclusion
Whether you are a business traveler in an airport needing to keep in constant communication with the office
or you are a teenager sharing the latest selfie with a BFF, nothing is as frustrating as running out of
battery power on your smartphone. Phone manufacturers and carriers understand how important battery life
is in their customers choices for equipment and service and promote battery life performance to differentiate
themselves from the competition.
Anritsu leverages its unique SmartStudio Manager (SSM) environment to implement its Battery Life Test
Package. This test package automatically configures the MD8475A Signaling Testers network simulator,
controls the power supply data collection and generates detailed test results that can be converted into a
spreadsheet for reporting purposes.
Battery Life Test Packages are available for the AT&T Ecosystem (2G, 3G, LTE) and Verizon Wireless
Ecosystem (LTE). There are also Basic Battery Life Test Packages available according to GSMA as
standard-installed in SSM.
With its portfolio of network simulator tester combined with the automation software, Anritsu allows
to easily create custom scenarios and provides a set of battery consumption tests based on GSMA
specifications which are recommended by GCF since March 2012.
References
[1] Moore, Gordon E. (1969). Cramming more components onto integrated circuits (PDF).
Electronics Magazine. p. 4
[2] GSMA TS.09 Battery Life Measurement and Current Consumption Technique
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Anritsu Company 2015
Document Number: Anritsu AOC AppNote _v1
Printed February 15

Understanding Battery Life Testing

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